Essay #1:
 
Arman and Allan McCollum: Repetition and The Objectification of Identity

    The Reputation of objects in any situation provokes a conversation about reproduction. How the object is made directly influences how we place value upon it. The handmade, the mass produced, or the personally nostalgic object, all hold value to us as individuals. This value is upheld by societal reinforcement, a universal perception of   there worth. Throughout history that value system has changed drastically due to advances in technology. The Sheer number of things that are produced around the world, in a given day, is astronomical. As these “things” accumulate around us,  they begin to create a larger picture. Everything from the car we drive to the clothes we wear have become a physical representation of the person we believe ourselves to be. Everyone’s ultimate goal in life is to define themselves as an individual to the people they love and the community in which they live. Both Arman and Alan McCollum wrestle with the role of the physical object and the people who produce them, in the objectification of our identity.
    Arman was a French born American artist who is known most notably for his “Accumulations”. These were a collection of similar objects, usually mass produced and distressed, that were positioned in relationship to each other . Many of them were cast in polyester, placed in boxes or fixed together in an aesthetically pleasing way. Historically, Arman is associated with Neo Realism, a movement in French contemporary art, that happened in conjunction with the  emergence of Pop Art in America. Arman dealt with the idea of humans possessing a species specific trait of accumulating objects. Essentially, we define ourselves as individuals by the objects that we collect. These objects that accumulate in our lives more often than not have no meaning or value to anyone but ourselves. American psychoanalyst Werener Muensterberger attributes the action of collecting to a child using a secondary object for relief of separation anxiety from their mother.  With the use of the found and discarded, he addresses issues of  mass production and the  literal accumulation of waste. As a child Arman bore witness to the biggest technological boom in the history of our species. The Industrial Revolution gave birth to factories and machines that created an endless stream of products.  He said, “ As a historical statement you are the fruit of your environment, but as an artist I am a witness of my time. Before it became an explosion, I sensed the invasion of objects.”   Paralleling his Accumulations was a series of work called “Tantrums” or “Slices”. In These works he explored the deconstruction and fragmentation of objects. For example, in Chopins Waterloo (1962), he destroyed a piano in front of violinist Yehudi Menuhin then fastened its fragmented pieces to a large panel of painted wood for presentation in the gallery. In these “Tantrums” he dealt with the idea of creating precious objects by destroying them.
    Allan McCollum is a contemporary American artist that focuses on how  objects and communities accumulate value. McCollum’s investigation of how communities create identities through objects, symbols and geography, is evident in his piece “Shapes from Maine”(2009). This show was part of an ongoing series of work that focuses on specific regions of the world and how their communities can be defined by the objects they produce or place value on. In this particular piece he collaborated with 4 companies who offer custom home craft goods to illustrate his fascination with Maine’s connections to craft.  Each of these companies were commissioned to create shapes designed by McCollum in materials specific to craft, such as cookie cutters and rubber stamps. All four companies created  2200 individual objects that were then installed in the Friedrich Gallery in New York. He also explores objects that occur naturally in contrast to the hand made. These were specific to geographical regions, like the sand spikes of Mount Signal California or the petrified lightning of central Florida. In his work “Plaster Surrogates” (1983), He used repetition to illustrate the serial production of objects and its effect on human or communal individuality. he created 551 cast surrogate paintings that consisted of a matte, a frame, and a void. The objects were virtually identical except for variations in scale and the frame. This piece spoke to the production of consumer products that can be accessorized to create the illusion of individuality, even though they are technically the same object. This raises the question, can we ever truly be unique? What happens when the people who pull the strings of our market economy control the production of objects that we use to define ourselves as individuals?
      Arman and McCollum use repetition in their work as a vehicle for content. In the reproduction of a singular object,  they draw attention to the way that material things are manipulated and how they manipulate us.  I am particularly interested in Armans association with the human psychological need to collect. McCollums piece “Surrogate Paintings”, is a subtly powerful representation of the  objectification of  our identity. In Richard Sennetts book ,“The Craftsman”,  he uses the Greek myth of Pandora’s casket to illustrate the danger of culture founded on man made things. Pandoras casket contained gifts from all the gods but when it is opened, the wondrous gifts would spill forth scattering, “pains and evils among men“. In McCollums, “Surrogate Paintings” and a large portion of Armans work,  grapple with the darker side of our material culture and the dichotomy created between advancement and destruction. I find it interesting that we are all culturally influenced into manifesting our psychological selves by consuming and therefore feeding the machine that could potentially cause our demise.